Posts by Kevin McMurtrie

Re: Notes? How old school!

Big color CRTs cost a fortune, if for nothing other than their mounting hardware. There were no practical means of photographing them during that era. Remember that CRTs flicker and there were no portable stabilized lenses. You'd need a film camera with a telephoto lens, manual controls, and a mini tripod. It would be heavy, expensive to buy, not cheap to use, and loud. Film development was usually next day.

I had worse. One instructor gave weekly assignments by ISBN and chapter range. There must have been a hundred students and a hundred librarians contemplating his murder. Librarians had to use microfiche catalogs and telephone calls to find books. They'd get a call looking for a book while on hold for their call looking for the same book. With 100 students calling at the same time, there was no way of knowing when the search looped.

It can be mutually beneficial. There's a mobile Telco that always rushes in with truck-mounted cell towers to provide free service after disasters. They say it's serving the community but it's pushing the product too. Phones usually display the telco name while roaming.

Re: Hawks can cause power outages to.

PG&E? They could blame a power outage on the acoustic vibrations of a nearby drone.

There's an annual power outage in my neighborhood. Two sets of lines cross at right angles over a road and there are jumpers in the middle joining the HV wires. Gentle autumn breezes wiggle the wires and eventually snap a jumper. If it breaks free of the higher line, it swings around and slaps the 120V lines below. The row of old jumper clamps is testament to PG&E's technical competence.

Re: Talk to them like they are idiots.

You have to drink the Kool Aid to work there. Having a billionaire tell you to care less about money is no different than any of the other beliefs you must adopt and uphold.

Re: No idea why the surprise

There are a ton of products I'd buy if the collected data stayed in my ownership and the product's assistance wasn't tainted by an outside entity. This is why we may never have a future with robots. You can't trust the maker.

The Register knows that some people really love their Tesla.

The battery's charge is the reaction. Even the safe Lithium Iron Phosphate is a hot mess when it goes bad. Lithium Ion is worse because it has more storage, more thermal runaway, and flammable electrolyte that squirts out into a momentary fireball.

Not a language, but a website: Stack Overflow

Re: PR Checklist

5. Security has always been our top priority. This was the result of an extremely sophisticated attack force sponsored by hostile a nation.

I wish I had cheaters that good.

Me: That plus sign doesn't do what you think it does.

Applicant: Nah, it works.

Me: I see you're pasting in Python then typing C over it. Would you like to do this in Python instead? Any language is fine.

Applicant: No, C is best.

Me: ...ooookay

Re: a black sand beach

There's almost always a gentle breeze on the islands but there are certain places you don't want to be if it stops on a sunny day. Black sand or dry rusty dirt - you'll be cooked if it takes you longer than a few minutes to escape. It's an insulator that heats up quickly.

Re: Well, I’m impressed… not

Skips over dessert. It doesn't have the range to cross a desert or load capacity for desserts.

Re: More, please

You're probably not on stock Android if anything after Android 9 works well. The brightness was moved to a second level quick actions menu. That's two one-fingered swipes down or one two fingered swipe down from the top. Neither one is very reliable because what seems to be a power saving trick with the touch screen sampling.

Re: 240 volts?

Oddly enough, I test car batteries by counting the seconds that they can run a 1.6 kW carpet vacuum cleaner.

Re: Could we not just....

Maybe add a second air chamber to car tires that pushes out a rigid ridge. Add air while cruising, remove it for traction. Some bike tires have this rigid ridge but it's a hassle because the whole tire's pressure needs changing to raise or lower it.

Using the right tools

Apple makes scalability compromises to accomplish their chips' performance. Apple Silicon will never be suitable for extremely large workloads. It's not what the architecture is trying to accomplish and it's not a market that Apple has the slightest interest in.

The x86 chips also have compromises to accomplish their performance. They work best when they're bulky and running hot.

ARM servers already exist and have good uses, but they're not yet replacing what x86 is good at.

Re: True then?

The codebase will get permanently forked if Google cripples Chromium or Android too quickly. They break unwanted features "for security" in small steps until they're unusable and unused.

The joke will be on Google when their moneymakers fail by the same means. I can see official Android and Chromium ending soon. New features are trivial but break everything, so why bother staying aligned to their source repo? Once that's done, there's no reason for anyone to keep showing Google ads or installing Google spyware either. Google can go join whatever Oath is.

Re: It's on the Priority List, I swear!

Was "fix searching" nearby?

Re: Okay, AI chatbots - so how would this work out ?

I haven't been able to get humans at AT&T to understand imminent failure either.

Re: Does this apply to everyone?

The temperature lags behind the sunshine. That's why the "peak" is 4pm to 9pm. All the details are charted at https://www.caiso.com/ if you're interested.

Re: biometric HASHES

They could presumably be used for bank account authentication through a modified or reverse engineered banking app.

Re: Cloudflare$

Cloudflare does what makes Cloudflare money. They're somewhat like a digital arms dealer. They shield businesses from the very criminals they shield from discovery.

Reg Mods - I did send you evidence of Cloudflare shielding criminals, as you requested in the past. Many more examples are available in Spamhaus and online forums. Besides, it would make a great story if Cloudflare accused The Register of hosting slanderous content in the comments section, as you fear may happen.